Pandagon is daily opinion blog covering feminism, politics, and pop culture. Come for the politics, stay for the complete lack of patience for the B.S. and bad faith coming from conservative leaders and pundits.

Facebook groups: The new YouTube comment threads

Between college classmates who lament the abortion holocaust and midwestern cousins who join a group which includes such sentiments as:

America will soon know how good of a president he was

and

Thank you for being one of the best Presidents America has ever had! You brought dignity back to the White House, Mr. President. You are an honorable man. History will show how your strength and wisdom protected us from many evil intentions. I proudly salute you!

and the ever-popular

“Because George W. Bush is the hero the United States of America deserves, but not the one it needs right now…and so they’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector…a Dark Knight.”

Facebook is the perfect place to go if you want to realize that the changes of the last…well, six days…are leaving some people behind. True, it’s usually the kind of people that make you wish the “Drop ten friends, get a Whopper” promotion was still in place, but overall, my recent flurry of nostalgia is not without its costs.

On the other hand, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the preponderance of non-wingnuts, even among my college friends, a development which does represent a large-scale “growing-up” process. My first day in the dorms a straw poll was taken and I discovered that I was one of two self-identified liberals in the entire building. And while I doubt many of the latter-day Obama fans are full-scale converts in the “I used to be a fundamentalist, but after 8 years of George W. Bush, I’m outraged by homophobia” sense, being pro-Obama is nonetheless a step forward. Maybe he’ll actually get a chance to do something before they do another reversal and start screaming for his head the way they all did Bill Clinton’s back in dear old college days.